RonanCodes/vault-create

Create Vault

Scaffold a new LLM Wiki vault as a separate git repo.

Usage

/vault-create                                    # interactive — interviews you
/vault-create my-research --domain ai-research   # direct — skips interview

Vault Naming Convention

All vaults are prefixed with llm-wiki- so they're easy to identify in Obsidian's vault switcher alongside non-LLM Wiki vaults.

• User says "research" → vault name becomes llm-wiki-research
• User says "project-alpha" → vault name becomes llm-wiki-project-alpha
• User says "personal" → vault name becomes llm-wiki-personal

If the user provides a name that already starts with llm-wiki-, don't double-prefix.

Step 0: Interview (if no arguments provided)

If the user runs /vault-create with no arguments, interview them to figure out the right vault setup. Use AskUserQuestion for each question.

Question 1: What's the vault for?

• Personal knowledge (health, goals, journal, self-improvement)
• Research deep-dive (one topic over weeks/months)
• Project knowledge (tech decisions, architecture, domain context for a specific project)
• Reading a book (characters, themes, plot threads, chapter notes)
• Business/competitive analysis (market research, competitor tracking)
• Learning/courses (structured learning on a topic)
• Other (ask them to describe)

Question 2: What domain or topic? Ask for a short domain tag, e.g. ai-research, personal, fintech-project, book-dune, go-to-market.

Question 3: What's the vault name? Suggest a kebab-case name based on their answers. Let them override.

• Personal → personal
• Research → <topic>-research (e.g. llm-research)
• Project → project-<name> (e.g. project-acme)
• Book → book-<title> (e.g. book-dune)

Question 4: Do you have existing files to import?

• Yes → suggest using /vault-import instead
• No → proceed with empty vault

After the interview, proceed to Step 1 with the gathered info.

Steps

1. Parse arguments from $ARGUMENTS:

   • First argument: vault name (required, kebab-case)
   • --domain <domain>: optional domain tag (e.g. ai-research, personal, work-project-x)
   • Apply prefix: if the name doesn't start with llm-wiki-, prepend it. E.g. research → llm-wiki-research

2. Create vault directory structure at vaults/<name>/:

vaults/<name>/
├── raw/                    # Immutable source documents
│   └── assets/             # Downloaded images, attachments
├── wiki/                   # LLM-generated markdown (the wiki)
│   ├── index.md            # Catalog of all pages
│   ├── concepts/           # Concept pages (ideas, patterns, techniques)
│   ├── entities/           # Entity pages (people, orgs, tools, frameworks)
│   ├── sources/            # Source summaries (one per ingested source)
│   └── comparisons/        # Comparison and synthesis pages
├── log.md                  # Chronological activity log
├── CLAUDE.md               # Vault conventions (thin config)
├── README.md               # Overview for GitHub (what's inside, stats, purpose)
└── .gitignore              # Ignore Obsidian ephemeral state, .DS_Store

3. Create wiki/index.md with this template:

# <Vault Name> — Wiki Index

## Sources
| Page | Summary | Domain | Date Added |
|------|---------|--------|------------|

## Entities
| Page | Summary | Type | Domain | Date Added |
|------|---------|------|--------|------------|

## Concepts
| Page | Summary | Domain | Date Added |
|------|---------|--------|------------|

## Comparisons
| Page | Summary | Domain | Date Added |
|------|---------|--------|------------|

4. Create log.md with this template:

# <Vault Name> — Activity Log

Chronological record of all vault activity. Each entry is parseable:
`grep "^## \[" log.md | tail -5` gives the last 5 entries.

## [<today's date>] init | Vault created
- Vault initialized with domain: <domain or "unset">
- Structure: raw/, wiki/ (concepts, entities, sources, comparisons)
---

5. Create CLAUDE.md with this template:

# <Vault Name>

## Vault Info
- **Domain**: <domain or "general">
- **Created**: <today's date>

## Conventions

### Default Domain Tag
All pages in this vault inherit the domain tag: `<domain>`.
Additional domain tags can be added per-page when content spans multiple domains.

### Frontmatter Requirements
Every wiki page MUST have YAML frontmatter with at minimum:
- `title`: Page title
- `date-created`: YYYY-MM-DD
- `date-modified`: YYYY-MM-DD
- `page-type`: one of summary, entity, concept, comparison, source-note
- `domain`: list of domain tags (always includes vault default)
- `tags`: additional categorization tags
- `sources`: list of raw file paths (raw/filename.md) and/or original URLs
- `related`: list of wikilinks to related pages

### Source Linking
Every wiki page MUST link back to its raw source material:
1. In frontmatter `sources` field: path to raw/ file and/or original URL
2. In a `## Sources` section at the bottom of the page with readable links

### Cross-References
Use Obsidian-compatible wikilinks: `[[page-name]]`
When mentioning an entity or concept that has its own page, always link it.

### Page Organization
- Source summaries go in `wiki/sources/`
- Entity pages (people, orgs, tools) go in `wiki/entities/`
- Concept pages (ideas, patterns, techniques) go in `wiki/concepts/`
- Comparisons and synthesis go in `wiki/comparisons/`

### Naming Convention
Filenames: kebab-case, descriptive. Example: `wiki/entities/andrej-karpathy.md`

6. Create README.md with this template:

# <Vault Display Name>

<One-line description of what this vault is about.>

## What's Inside

| Folder | Contents |
|--------|----------|
| `wiki/sources/` | Source summaries |
| `wiki/entities/` | People, tools, frameworks |
| `wiki/concepts/` | Ideas, patterns, techniques |
| `wiki/comparisons/` | Side-by-side analyses |
| `raw/` | Immutable source documents |

## Stats

- **Domain**: <domain>
- **Created**: <today's date>
- **Pages**: 0

## How This Works

This vault is powered by [LLM Wiki](https://github.com/RonanCodes/llm-wiki) — Claude Code is the engine, Obsidian is the viewer. Pages are created via `/ingest`, queried via `/query`, and health-checked via `/lint`.

See the [engine repo](https://github.com/RonanCodes/llm-wiki) for setup and usage.

7. Create .gitignore:

# macOS
.DS_Store

# Obsidian — keep config, ignore ephemeral state
.obsidian/workspace.json
.obsidian/workspace-mobile.json
.obsidian/.obsidian-git-backup-*
.obsidian/plugins/
.obsidian/themes/
.trash/

8. Initialize git repo:

cd vaults/<name>
git init
git add .
git commit -m "✨ feat: initialize <name> vault"

9. Register in Obsidian (ask user first):

Register the vault in Obsidian's vault registry so it appears in the vault switcher:

python3 -c "
import json, time, hashlib
path = '$HOME/Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json'
with open(path) as f:
    data = json.load(f)
vault_path = '$(pwd)/vaults/<name>'
vault_id = hashlib.md5(vault_path.encode()).hexdigest()[:16]
data['vaults'][vault_id] = {'path': vault_path, 'ts': int(time.time() * 1000)}
with open(path, 'w') as f:
    json.dump(data, f)
"

Then open it:

open "obsidian://open?vault=<name>"

Works on macOS. Important: Tell the user they need to fully quit Obsidian (Cmd+Q, not just close the window) and reopen it for the new vault to appear in the vault switcher. Obsidian only reads its config on startup.

10. Report success with next steps:

• Vault is open in Obsidian (or tell them to open it)
• Ingest first source: /ingest <source> --vault <name>